


even if the skies get rough (i won't give up)

by estel_willow



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: M/M, alex is injured (again)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 16:32:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18781987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estel_willow/pseuds/estel_willow
Summary: “Guerin,” he breathes though his mind shouts Michael’s name. He turns to see the man who has dominated his thoughts since he was sixteen standing in the doorway of his cabin, backlit by the setting sun in a way that makes the curls atop his head glow like a ringlet-halo, caramel-kissed and beautiful. “I thought you’d left.”





	even if the skies get rough (i won't give up)

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to [lire-casander](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lire_Casander/pseuds/Lire_Casander) and [mandsangelfox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandsangelfox/pseuds/mandsangelfox) for handholding! This would not have been possible without them! 
> 
> Title from Jason Mraz' "I won't Give up" which conveniently came on when I was faffing over the title. 
> 
> I seem to have a habit of whumping Alex. I would say I'm sorry, but I don't really know if I am?

It’s cold. That’s the first thing he notices. It’s cold but it’s hot and his body aches and he remembers Fallujah and Baghdad. He remembers the pulsing pain in his whole body and the sounds of people yelling and things exploding over his head with his ears clogged with water and all he’d wanted was Michael. He feels like that now, he’s cold and alone and he can feel a weight beside him on the bed and it’s probably Wentz. He should get up and let her out (he’d settled on Wentz before he knew that she was a she but the name stuck) but he can’t move and the rough scrape of her tongue against his cheek feels like a washcloth which makes no sense. His limbs are heavy and he can’t move. Everything hurts. 

He’ll sleep a little more and then he’ll get up. Maybe once he’s slept a bit more he’ll feel better and he’ll work out just why he feels so fucking shit.

> _”You stayed.” Michael’s voice is gentle and reverent, lying back as Alex pulls back a little like he’s been caught. Michael’s hand’s quick to catch the back of his neck to drag him up into a kiss. It’s searing, blistering with the kind of heat Alex has only ever associated with anger but he melts into Michael._
> 
> _“It was late,” Alex replies, and he can feel Michael rolling his eyes from where those searing kisses have brushed along his jaw. Michael’s teeth graze the hollow of his throat and Alex looks around properly and sees the ceiling of the cabin and he remembers that he’s home and he’s safe and he’s with Michael and it’s_ right _._
> 
> _“Really?” Michael murmurs and delights in the slightly hissed inward breath that comes as his teeth graze over Alex’s pulse and then down to the hollow of his throat. Alex’s hands lift to curl in his hair and Michael chuckles, low and dirty._
> 
> _“I’m really glad you’re here,” Alex tells him and when Michael looks up, whatever he sees written over the lines of Alex’s face make him smile so brightly Alex thinks he might burn._

The next time he wakes up he’s alone. Wentz isn’t on the bed and when Alex shifts he thinks he can smell someone familiar - _Michael_ \- on the edges of the sheets but before he can say anything he hurls himself to the side (registering a breath-stealing sensation of pain ripping through him as he does) so that he doesn’t throw up on the sheets. He’s not sure he could clean up if he did.

A hand’s on his back steading him immediately and a kidney tray’s shoved underneath his face and he’s overwhelmed with a blinding pain and the coppery tang of blood as he vomits. He thinks about Michael and he thinks about the look on Flint’s face when the world pitched to the side and he realised that he’d shot his own brother in the middle of the desert. He remembers hearing Hunter’s voice and somewhere he thought he heard someone else but he was wrong. He’d been wrong before and it had broken him. 

The world whites out as he hears Kyle’s voice snapping at someone. “You should have fucking called me earlier. He’s bleeding internally and- fuck, we need to move him.”

> _“What do you mean ‘Michael’s gone’?” Alex snarls into the phone and he’s hardly listening to what Max says next. Something about the airstream and a bunker underneath it and how Michael’s been looking for a way off the planet for years and that he finally got the last piece of the ship (and fuck, Alex feels his stomach go cold because he had given that to Michael two days ago because it wasn’t his to keep - just like Michael - and though he’d said that he wouldn’t hold him back he had wanted him to stay and he thought that had been obvious)._
> 
> _“He’s_ gone _.”_
> 
> _Max sounds more distraught than Alex has ever heard him. He sounds like something in him’s shattered and broken, his voice is raw and shaking and there’s a part of Alex that thinks_ good _because he knows they left Michael behind and Michael’s issues with abandonment all start with Max and Isobel but his own blood is rushing in his ears and he can’t hear anything past_ gone gone gone gone gone _._
> 
> _They haven’t spoken since Michael said to him he wanted to try a ‘new normal’, and Alex had calmly said he thought Michael was making the wrong decision and that he was right there, and he would be there, waiting for Michael to realise. But Michael never came._
> 
> _Now he never will._
> 
> _Alex hangs up the phone on some kind of apology from Max that he doesn’t hear._

It’s sterile. He knows this because it smells clean and acrid and it hurts his nose and his whole body’s numb and limp and floating. It feels nice. Someone’s holding his hand, and rubbing their thumb along his knuckles. That feels nice, too.

All the sounds feel like they’re coming up from under the water, bubbling into his ears and he can’t work out what they’re saying, but whoever’s speaking has a nice voice, slow and soothing and he feels lips against his forehead and he almost chokes himself trying to breathe them in because they’ve used Michael’s washing powder and fuck how has he become this person?

He can’t open his eyes, but there’s a hand around his and that’s enough to stop him from floating away and even if it’s not Michael he thinks that maybe it doesn’t matter because Michael’s gone anyway and he won’t be coming back. He’s spent forever getting used to the knowledge that he’s lost Michael and it still hurts to breathe.

> _“Alex.”_
> 
> _He drops the cup he’s holding when he hears the low timbre of Michael’s voice wrapping itself around his mind. He hadn’t thought he’d hear that voice again and had just about gotten to grips with the grief of that loss that it surges back violently when he hears his name spill from lips that aren’t curled up in a smile._
> 
> _The cup never hits the floor because Michael’s outstretched hand - healed, now, no longer bearing the scars and marks of the brutality of his father’s homophobia - has caught it, telekinesis preventing lukewarm coffee and china from splattering all over the floor and Alex’s bare foot._
> 
> _“Guerin,” he breathes though his mind shouts Michael’s name. He turns to see the man who has dominated his thoughts since he was sixteen standing in the doorway of his cabin, backlit by the setting sun in a way that makes the curls atop his head glow like a ringlet-halo, caramel-kissed and beautiful. “I thought you’d left.”_
> 
> _Michael shrugs and the cup floats to the counter. Alex wets his lower lip, trying to work out if he’s dreaming or not. He rocks his weight to the right slightly. His stump aches, a sharp staccato of sensation shooting up his thigh and into his chest with the knowledge that this is real._
> 
> _“Turns out it isn’t just the surface of the planet that’s covered in garbage,” Michael starts, but it’s a line and Alex can see it immediately. His eyebrows crawl up his forehead in an arc of disbelief and Michael at least looks sheepish at having been caught out in a lie._
> 
> _Stunned surprise gives way to an anger Alex thought he was over. He grips the counter and his features twist into a frown._
> 
> _“You fucking_ left _.”_
> 
> _“I_ tried _to leave,” Michael corrects, a carefully crafted irreverence over his face so Alex can’t see what’s going on underneath. But Alex has always been able to read him like a fucking book because Michael wears his heart on his sleeve, written across his eyes even when he’s got his transparent cowboy swagger to protect himself. Alex sees apprehension in the flicker of a tongue over Michael’s lower lip, in the faint line of tension in the slope of his shoulders. He sees nervousness in the way Michael flexes his left hand, a phantom ache rippling through bones once twisted and gnarled by a hatred he never deserved. He sees an ache for acceptance in the way Michael rocks forwards, subtle and unsure like it’s hard for him to stay rooted to the spot, uncertain of his welcome. “I didn’t get far.”_
> 
> _“Fine,” Alex bites, “you tried to fucking leave, you_ tried _to fucking leave and you didn’t say goodbye.” He feels his voice fracture in a spiderweb, Alex is a chip in a windscreen barely patched together and rocketing over rough terrain. Michael put his foot on the gas. “You just left.”_
> 
> _“Didn’t think you’d wanna see me,” Michael admits, soft and scuffing the toe of his stupid cowboy boot on the ground. He ducks his gaze down but lifts it sharply when Alex scoffs. “After everything, you know?”_
> 
> _“I- Of course I would have- how the fuck else could I have asked you to stay?”_
> 
> _Michael crashes into him in an instant, a bone-crushing hug immediately precedes him ducking down and slanting his lips over Alex’s. His glasses skitter to the floor and Michael’s arms secure around his waist, tugging their bodies together until they’re so close their atoms begin to fuse._

He registers his own soft protests at waking up before his eyes open again. Everything is soft and blurred around the edges and Alex logically knows that’s because of whatever medication he’s been given. He only knows _that_ because he remembers this floating feeling from before. The strange, almost ethereal absenteeism separating his mind from his body. He feels weightless. And, just like he had in Germany, he turns his head and sees Michael perched on the chair beside the bed.

In his dream, Michael had come back. He huffs out a breath, disappointed at his imagination for hallucinating Michael looking wrecked and strung out, worry lines on his face and curls greasy and limp, exhaustion etched into every part of his body. Alex’s brain is an asshole. Of all the times he’s seen Michael, worries and exhausted is not in his top ten. Or fifteen. Alex hates the sight of Michael like this because it means something terrible’s happened.

And okay, so the beeping of machines and the snakes wedding of tubes and lines and wires coming out of various parts of Alex indicate that maybe something bad did happen (he got shot, that’s what happened but he’s on the good drugs so he can’t feel it right now but he’s not on the best drugs because otherwise, Michael would look more like _Michael_ and less like a worried shell that’s tugged his curls out of his hair), but that isn’t the point.

The point is, Alex thinks, that is brain is an asshole. It woke him up from a dream that was getting good to the disappointing reality of isolation and hallucinations.

“Ah, you’re awake,” Kyle’s voice says from somewhere near his foot. Foot, he still has his left leg, right? He wiggles his toes and can feel it, but he had the same reaction after he lost his right leg for weeks so he can’t trust the misfiring neurons to help support any sense of reality so he shifts slightly, trying to lift his head and move past the lancing pain in his gut. The worry pushes through the hurt and fogginess of the drugs that make his head feel separate from the rest of him, the overarching numbness disappearing, washed away by the chill of terror, disorienting flashbacks to waking up in Germany missing a limb he could still feel.

There’s a hand on his chest, warmer than a hallucination should be and Alex blinks up to see Michael hovering over him gently pushing him back. He looks past the hallucination to Kyle, almost offended that Kyle isn’t stopping this. Or maybe, offended because it’s Kyle’s drugs that have caused it. Whatever. 

“Lie down, Alex,” Michael says and Alex’s skin breaks out into goosebumps. Alex scowls at him because even when he’d been on the best drugs Michael had never _talked_ to him. That was just icing on the cake. So he shifts a little, digs his elbows into the mattress that’s pressed against the curves of his body and pushes against the hand. He always was stubborn.

“Manes,” Kyle snaps, and something in his tone appeals to the Airman in him. He feels his body shudder, an instinct honed over years of service willing him to obey, and his gaze flicks away from the hallucination to Kyle. “Lie down or I’ll sedate you again.”

Alex tightens his jaw, cranes his head to look at his legs and it’s like Kyle realises in one fell swoop what he’s worried about. He watches Kyle’s deep brown eyes widen and his forehead crease in concern. The chart’s quickly tucked under his arm and he rushes forward, catching Alex’s shoulder. 

“No one’s taken your other leg, Alex,” he soothes and Alex turns his head away from Michael, away from the warm hand that’s pumping heat into his core just by resting against him. “You got shot, remember? You’re a reckless asshole who got shot and didn’t call me.”

“Didn’ wanna bother you,” Alex manages in response which feels appropriate, throat try and scratchy. The hallucination somehow manages to provide him with water, hand lifting from his chest and leaving spreading ice curling over his skin in its wake. Michael lifts the water to his lips and he swallows, coughing and trying to ignore how nice it feels to have a thumb brushing just along the scar behind his left ear.

> _“You should let it go,” Michael says and the tone’s grating on Alex more than it normally does. He shrugs off the hand that comes to rest on his shoulder and even though he’s not looking at Michael he can_ feel _the hurt radiating off him as he backs up. “You’ve been sat at that laptop for the better part of a week, Alex, whatever you think you have to do, you don’t. I never asked you to.”_
> 
> _That draws Alex’s attention away from the scrolling code in front of him. He’s been buried so deep in it recently that whenever he looks away the world’s a series of green and yellow ones-and-zeroes like he’s looking through the Matrix. He turns in the chair to look at Michael and lifts his shoulders, helpless to explain the drive he has to finish what he started._
> 
> _“It’s not-”_
> 
> _“Not what, Alex?” Michael challenges, shoulders squared and chin lifted. “Not about me? Then what’s it about?”_
> 
> _“That wasn’t what I was going to say,” Alex retorts hotly, getting to his feet because he feels like sitting down puts him at a disadvantage. His leg aches, stealing his breath briefly because he’s been sat still for so long and has been neglecting his PT that the effect of that is finally filtering through._
> 
> _“Then what were you gonna say, Alex?” The tone’s familiar, tired and frustrated and_ done _and Alex feels a twist in his chest. In another time (another life, it feels like), that question was followed by a statement of truth that was twisted and tumbled by Alex’s brain, loved instead of love, friends instead of everything. His mouth opens, response sharp on the tip of his tongue but he can’t form the words. “I told you that what your dad did wasn’t your fault, that you don’t have to fix it and-”_
> 
> _“I **do**!” The force with which Alex announces that startles them both. “Mich-” his hand moves through his hair, restless and unhappy and his wrist knocks the edge of his glasses. The world briefly pivots. It feels appropriate. He doesn’t know how to explain the need to fix his father’s - his family’s - legacy. He just needs to. He has to destroy it, he has to napalm it and then salt the earth so nothing can ever grow from it again. _
> 
> _“You’re obsessed,” Michael challenges and Alex doesn’t disagree._
> 
> _Instead, he looks Michael dead in the eye. “I’m trying to do the right thing, Guerin. I’m trying to fix the fucking mess my family’s left behind. Trying to do something_ good _! Trying to make amends for Cau-”_
> 
> _“Nothing’s gonna make up for what happened there,” Michael says bitterly and the hollowness in his voice, the fight that drains out of him and the pain that rocks through Alex as if it were his own makes him feel weak. They’ve never talked about it, never talked about Caulfield, about how Alex’s family had been explicitly involved in the systematic genocide of Michael’s people. How the failsafe set up by his father was what had been triggered by Michael. How Michael carries the guilt of being the reason everyone in that prison died except it’s not his to carry, it’s Alex’s. That’s how root cause analysis works. The explosion was the end result, tracking that back to its roots shows that it’s the Manes and Valenti fucking family legacy that created the prison and the traps. “You can’t change the past, Alex.”_
> 
> _Alex’s jaw tenses, he can feel it ticking as he swallows, presses his tongue against his teeth and takes a deep, sharp breath in through his nose. “I know, Michael, but I can stop it from ever happening again to anyone else, I can stop them from trying to hurt you and Max and Isobel. I can stop- I can stop the hurt and then you can-”_
> 
> _“What about the hurt it’s causing now?”_
> 
> _Alex blinks, the comment being so left-field that it utterly derails his train of thought. Michael’s laugh is humourless, somewhere between a laugh and a scoff and Alex watches him shake his head._
> 
> _“You think it’s easy watching you self destruct like this?”_
> 
> _Something in Alex rankles. He feels his brows furrowing, arms folding across his chest and unfolding like he can’t work out what he wants to do with himself. He doesn’t understand why Michael doesn’t get it. He doesn’t see why Michael can’t just accept that once this is done it’s finished. The late nights, the not sleeping, the barely eating… the hours and hours he’s been spending decrypting hard drives and hacking into facilities to wipe out all traces of the data his father had gathered on the mute, naked kids found wandering in the desert… it would all be over. He can let go when it’s done. Sleep when he’s dead and all that._
> 
> _Michael’s looking at him, open and brutal and bare and Alex steels his jaw. “No one says you have to.” The words are cold even to his ears but he doesn’t understand just how cold until later. As it is, he turns around and sits himself back down heavily at the laptop, checking on his algorithms. This server’s proving harder to crack that he’d thought it would be._
> 
> _He hears the door close and thinks that Michael will be back later. He just needs some time to cool off._
> 
> _Michael doesn’t come back later that day. In fact, Michael doesn’t come back at all and, two weeks later, sends Isobel to get some of his things, and she treats Alex with a frosty indifference he has to respect. And Alex, stuck somewhere between crawling horror, shame and stubbornness doesn’t go after him. He’ll fix things when he’s done, he tells himself. Maybe he can see Michael when this is all over, he tells himself. Michael will understand then, he tells himself. Sleep when he’s dead and all that._

Kyle rolls his eyes, managing to look immaculately irritated and baffled and fond all at once. “You’re such an idiot, Alex.”

“You know,” Michael says, smile sharp but eyes soft as he flicks them up to look at Kyle. Alex is _almost_ sure that Kyle’s looking right back at him, “he’s growing on me.”

“Don’t get used to it, Guerin,” Kyle retorted, though his own lips were curled upwards and Alex’s world grinds to a dizzying halt. In a move that surprises all three of them, Alex shoots upright - teeth gritted against the lancing-hot pain - to grab at Michael’s wrist, eyes flicking between Michael and Kyle. “What?” The question echoes in surround sound, both men’s foreheads wrinkled in an almost identical knotted brow of confusion. 

“You can see him?”

Michael scoffs, but Kyle’s response is slower. He places the chart on the bed and touches the hand that isn’t desperately gripping at Michael’s. 

“Alex, how much do you remember about what happened?”

The careful, cautious way Kyle looks at him makes his skin crawl. “I got shot, Valenti, not bashed in the head” he bites, defensive. “Just answer my question.”

“Guerin’s been here the whole time. Can’t you smell that?”

“Fuck you, man,” Michael retorts, though without heat. The jab is half-hearted and Alex can see his golden-flecked eyes beginning to fill with worry again, replacing the relief that had flooded his exhausted features when Alex had woken.

“In your dreams,” Kyle’s response shoots back across the bed like a gunshot. There was a pregnant pause that hovers in the air, like actors waiting for their next line, the banter is easy and practised and obviously wasn’t over, or at least, it wouldn’t usually be over. Alex looks between the two of them and sinks back into the fluffy pillows. Kyle shifts awkwardly and glances at the monitors that are attached to Alex. “I should leave you two alone,” he mutters finally. “You’re familiar with how a morphine- yeah, okay.” Evidently, Kyle thinks better than to try and tell Alex how to work the button on the bed that controlled his painkiller supply. Alex is kind of grateful.

Michael moves away from the bed as Kyle does and it’s like the air’s sucked out of the room. Alex, having sunk back to sleepy and confused, watches them talk quietly, heads close together before he sees Kyle clapping Michael on the arm and leaving, shutting the door behind himself. 

“You know,” Michael says, once the door’s closed, his shoulders slumped even as he pushes a hand through his hair, curls not immediately falling forward as though their will to rebel has been stripped away because of how often they’ve been swept back, “I don’t know if I should be insulted or not that you weren’t expecting me to be here.” 

He drops heavily into the chair beside Alex and doesn’t even hesitate to reach out and curl his fingers around Alex’s, lacing their fingers together and slumping forward to press his lips against the back of Alex’s hand. Though he’s high, Alex is sure he can feel his synapses and nerves firing, desperately chasing the tingles of a kiss he can see but not feel. 

“You weren’t there in Germany,” Alex manages, flexing his fingers in Michael’s hold and letting the drugs sweep him away. He feels Michael’s eyes on him more than anything else, the curious sadness at being given a snippet of information about a time Alex doesn’t talk about. “Wished that you were.”

“I woulda come,” is the soft response and Alex hums under his breath, _no, you wouldn’t_ doesn’t fall off his lips because there’s a kiss being pressed to his forehead and it makes his eyes close. “Go back to sleep, Alex,” Michael breathes the words against his skin and Alex turns his head, chasing the touch as he pulls back. “I’ll be here when you wake up. We can talk.”

Alex drifts off to the rhythmic sound of his own heartbeat and the warm weight of the promise of a conversation, echoed on his skin by the heat of a hand he’d honestly thought he’d never hold again.


End file.
